Disney’s The Incredibles, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Mean Girls, 50 First Dates and The Polar Express. These are all movies that came out the last time a Central Michigan cross country team won the Mid-American Conference Championship.

Next year, however, could be the best chance the women’s team has had in a long time to win the MAC Championship.

The women’s team returns four of their top five runners with only senior Alyssa Dyer leaving the team after this year. Fellow senior Kelly Schubert redshirted her freshman year and has one more year of eligibility.

The four runners they return all finished in the top 22 this year at the MAC Championship and all will improve with another year of training and experience under their belt.

They will be led by sophomore Kirsten Olling, who finished seventh this year in the MAC Championship, and Schubert, but will also field a healthy dose of very young talent in freshmen Samantha Allmacher and Megan O’Neill, both of whom received championship experience this year.

This year's MAC Champion, Eastern Michigan, by contrast will lose two of their top four runners, as will second place Bowling Green. The next closest team to CMU at the MAC Championship was Western Michigan in fourth place by a wide margin of 45 points.

With the Chips returning so many from this year’s top five and EMU and Bowling Green taking a step back, they have a very real shot to overtake both of them and capture the championship.

It has been 15 years since the last time the Chippewas won a MAC Championship. That drought, I am sure, will come to an end next season.